Friday, February 09, 2007

Dude! It's Only an Adjective!

My, quite a lot of traffic today. Much of it stemming from folks over at the critical and the thrash message boards. I dipped a toe in, and it felt like little-green-footballs—off-topic and bitter.

But one fellow caught my attention.After first dismissing me as illiterate and insane, he lightens up:

“i guess 9/11 pushed more than a few unstables over the edge, that dude is just begging to be dealt with.”

A few minutes later, this same anonymous poster tells an instant messaging buddy who’s whining about an unflattering picture I’d posted of him and threatening to quit chatting as a protest, that

“you can decide to never log on or ever look at this page again, but you never quit, too much blood has been shed for anyone to get off that easy”

What is the point of this morning chatter? Reinforcing the skateboarder’s code of omerta?

It’s true, too much blood has been shed to get off easy, or ever look back. But it’s Americans who are responsible for causing the violence, and it's us who must atone.

For an example of absolutely diabolical American evil, check out this video, which was taken down from YouTube, but reposted here. In it, an American soldier brags to his buddies about participating in a rape at Abu Gharib prison in Iraq of a

...girl, she was probably like 15 years old. Yeah, she was hot dude. The body on that girl, yeah, really tight. You know, hadn't been touched yet. She was fucking prime. So.... One of the guys started pimping her out for 50 bucks a shot. I think at the end of the day he'd made like 500 bucks before she hung herself.

Really?

Yeah. (laugh)

She hung herself? How's come she hung herself?

I don't know. She wasn't happy. (laugh)

There hasn’t been an actor born on this planet who could deliver that last line…she wasn’t happy….with such convincing malice--it sent a chill up my spine. This is real deal, not the manufactured villainy dished out to the dumbed down as political melodrama.

The web site hosting the video, La Voz de Aztlan, calls itself a “totally independent” bilingual online news service out of Los Angeles, and it reflects Mezo-American and Spanish-American roots. I link to a page there by Hector Carreon hypothesizing that Nicholas Berg Was Decapitated by Americans at Abu Gharib Prison for the same reason that Carreon posted it: because we believe it to be true and important to express. That is what has to “be dealt with,” to use the instant messenger’s phrase. Practitioners of this sort of transparency are called“true-believers” in Iraq, and they’re rightly given credit for America’s loss there.

The poster of the Abu Gharib video, Ernesto Cienfuegos, also expresses his views in

I don’t imagine anybody could come up with more extreme, irrational and poisonous anti-homosexual paranoia than found in Mr. Cienfuegos’s articles. While I repudiate his position in the strongest possible way—which is to not take him seriously—I nevertheless respect him for truly believing in something, and for the courage to express that, instead of something else, especially it's likely to be at a cost.

The political and social biases shown in La Voz de Aztlan are one part of a diverse America, which should it fracture, would do so in utterly unpredictable ways. Only sincerity can save us, or me, at least.

Not to brag, but what feels like reward keeps coming my way. After reading only 40 pages of 9/11: Synthetic Terrorism Made in USA by Webster Griffin Tarpley, I realized I’d found my doppelganger and the company feels real good right now. I wonder if Ann Coulter fans feel this way?

You can read Tarply’s book in full here, but I plan on buying a couple dozen copies and calling it a symbolic act of reverse econo-terrorism performance art

I’ll keep reading too, but not what the stubbornly named tryviolence writes. He/she must have been having a sugar attack this afternoon when it posted this public message at 2:48:16:

“steven war-ran, i know you're reading this, so i'm going to try to do you a favor a suggest that you watch your back for a week or two. or will it be next month? and behind which door?”

As an anonymous expression, however distinct, I can’t take you seriously. Still, I hope somebody drops a house on you. And never use “unstable” as a noun when it is always an adjective—like your C.T.

By the way, for those interested, Cienfuegos reports the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division is "presently investigating the allegations made in the video."

Have you figured out that we are just a message board for a loose knit group of skaters who like to joke about shit and homos?

Or do you still believe that we are a government conspiracy set up to give credence to Steve Riskus's photographic evidence? Steve Riskus, not actually being a real person, but a figment of the government conspiracy. Did I get it right?

See, I thought that back in November, you had figured it out. You seemed apologetic for being made to look such an idiot.

But now you are talking about us again as if we are some kind of government conspiracy. Are you for real? Or is this just some kind of lite-brite Aqua Teen Hunger Force "artistic" expirement?

Ya Fuckhead! Expirement, like expiring? As in expiration date? You're the motherfuckers with all the guns, remember? I hope you have some shoulders, or some meat elsewhere, because you got no meat upstairs.

The rest of the message was in secret code, which you didn't get, Mr. Non-Sequitur.

dear anonymous--I'm sorry it's taken me this long to come back and apologize for my outburst, which wasn't meant personally. Well, actually, I'd invested you with certain attributes, which would make you scary on a bad day, and I guess I responded with fear. Obviously something's up, I went immediately to your body parts. You're probably not even tall. I don't like it when I do this and I'm looking for help in changing, even anonymous help. I can hear the shock and recoil in your tone of voice, as I read your imaginary facial expression, and I'm sorry to take us there.